Birthday For Me @ Home

When it comes to birthdays in the Family we have our own style of celebrations year on year on year. 

Some years we have a lettuce salad, a plate of noodles, tomatoes, cake and ice cream. 

Other years we have the noodles, the coffee, the cake and ithe ce cream. 

There's one thing that's always on the table during celebrations though. 

Siew mais. 

Because they're bright, they're cheerful looking, and I absolutely love them. 

I love how they look.

I love how they taste. 

And it don't matter to me if they're the supermarket store-frozen kind, or whether we steam, fry, or boil them. 

I love them all ways. 

At home we tend to steam them up in the rice cooker. 

It comes out pretty and it's got great texture. 

We like to have them either with ketchup and chili (for The Parents) or with mayonnaise (for me)

There's another thing that's always on the table when it comes to birthdays. 

Cake. 

Which, depending on what's available, and what's the taste of the year, we like to vary. 

There've been years where we've done cream cakes from the likes of Bengawan Solo or Jack's Place.

There've also been pandan sponge cakes, and yam sponge cakes from here and there. 

This year we went for the taste of butter, and on the table there was a really nice butter cake that they'd bought from the confectionary shop downstairs.

For the sake of the camera and to make it look prettier, we followed The Parent's suggestion, and placed a nice, shiny, upcycled gold foil on top of it. 

It turned out rather well. 

It tasted very good too. 

It's not always I get to have sponge cakes from the heartland bakery. 

So I particularly loved this one. 

If we've got the Western style of birthday celebrations (aka cake), well, I'm Chinese, so birthdays mean noodles (for the longevity vibe) and on the table there were two types of noodles this year.

First one at .lunch was a Nissin ramen eaten dry- above two slices of cheese (mixed with a little bit of seasoning. 

Then at dinner there was a plate of sam lor hor fun bought up from the zichar stall downstairs. 

I loved them. 

Not just because it was my birthday but because I love noodles in general and these two types happen to be amongst my favorite ones. 

Yes, they might not be the healthiest food in the world- instant noodles, that is- but they're comfort food to me and there's nothing more endearing than to have a bowl of these curly wurly stuff sitting on the dining table almost as soon as you get home.  

What's more, this particular stall had done theirs dry (the way I like it) with huge pieces of sliced fish and lots of veggies too.

This particular stall did theirs remarkably dry with big pieces of fish on top too. 

I'm thankful for the beautiful decoration that was on the table. 

A pretty lampshade (to throw over the LED bulb) is not the easiest thing to do. 

And it is effort to upcycle a shiny gift bag to use. 

It's not just the decor that I'm thankful for.

I'm thankful for all the foods that I ate that day. 

It might not mean much to others, but each of the foods- the siew mais, the fish balls, the quail eggs, the big paus, the cherry tomatoes, the coffees- they all hold significance to me and to the life that I've lived. 

Whether it be the kind of paus that we bought, whether it be that the quail eggs were still in their shells, or that there were lollipops, or even the kind of cup we used for our coffees- they all had their own reasons, and their own stories that placed them firmly there.

We might not have an extra crock pot these days to boil the fuchok barley dessert like what we used to, but we can still have quail eggs and we can still eat them. 

We might also not have the paus as frequent as we would like, but they make for a good pre-meal snack and, like all celebrations are, make you feel warm and toasty anyway.